


Bring Your Weird Kid to Work Day

by PersephoneA06



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Arthur Fleck trying his best, Babysitting, Cute Kids, Kids say the darndest things, Missing Persons, Original Character(s), Randall is an ass, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27716378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneA06/pseuds/PersephoneA06
Summary: In lieu of a proper babysitter and strapped for cash, Arthur has no choice.Aka -- Arthur Fleck brings his preschooler to Ha-Ha's. Hoyt is less than amused with the clown.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Bring Your Weird Kid to Work Day

**Author's Note:**

> TW: sporadic, vague mentions of spousal abandonment, which led Arthur to his predicament
> 
> I wrote this at 1:30 AM on Halloween, y'all
> 
> Rated teen-and-up for Hoyt's filthy mouth
> 
> Arthur, in subdued domesticity, will not be as ... mentally unwell as he is in canon-Joker and in my other, longer story about Carrie, which intermixes into the narrative of Joker. This little one-shot is about four years before everything goes to shit for the both of them.

“Hey Peanut, can you do me a favor?”

Arthur’s voice was soft, nearly indecipherable. The pudgy hand that had been grasping at his shirt collar suddenly pushed against him, exerting the energy to be able to lift her head up.

One bleary eye opened to look at him. Her cheek was rosy from her uneasy resting spot on his collarbone. Neither the time nor the place allowed for such coddling, but he continued to rock her on his hip uneasily.

“Mm?” she questioned.

“Can you put a hand over your ear?” he asked, softer still. “Daddy has to talk to someone and it might be a little loud. Not suitable for a baby’s ears.”

Although Carrie grumbled something that only he could decipher as _“Not a baby,”_ she conceded. The sharp bone in her ear pressing against his collarbone hurt, but in the magical age where she began repeating every colorful phrase she heard from the television, he couldn’t risk anything.

Taking in a wavering breath, clutching the bag in his hand tighter, Arthur opened his boss’ door.

“Oh, how fucking nice of you to ... what the fuck is _this?”_

Hoyt looked up from his stack of documents -- chiefly the words **complaint, absence,** and **Carnival** bore into his head from a yellow slip on his desk -- to see Ha Ha’s resident hooky flinch in protest. What he first thought was an overgrown rag-doll, he realized with some incredulity was a toddler, pressing its head into Arthur’s neck.

“You brought a fucking _kid_ into my _shop?_ ” he asked, voice rising.

“Hoyt ... please --”

“Please what? This should be good.”

It gave him no pleasure to watch Arthur be so hopelessly awkward, dropping the paper bag in a vain attempt to hike the kid further up on his person. He knew the guy was going through a rough patch with the wife. That it happened on Hoyt’s dime, though, made him hard to sympathize with.

Fumbling for something to do besides stand uncomfortably and rock his daughter into a sleep that she couldn’t attain, Arthur sat in the green chair across from Hoyt’s desk. He positioned Carrie to be able to rest easier in his lap. At a groggy whimper, his hand instinctively pressed against her arm, hoping it would keep her semi-warm. He didn’t know why Hoyt kept the AC on at all hours of the day.

“Well aren’t you a real mother hen,” Hoyt observed, devoid of anything Arthur could recognize as a positive emotion. “What’s it doing here?”

“I ... I had no other options,” he blurted out. “I can’t afford another day off work, but I have _nobody_ to watch her.”

“Do I look like I’m runnin’ a charity ward, Arthur?” Upon further thought, “You didn’t bring her through the locker room, did you?”

“Nobody else is here,” he said quickly, realizing how bad that might’ve sounded once it reached his own ears. “And I made her close her eyes.”

Two scraggly grey eyebrows rose in vague surprise.

“Your mistake, not mine.”

Arthur felt the tips of his ears burn, unsure if he guessed correctly what Hoyt was referring to. Carrie may have been a _surprise_ , but she was no mistake.

“How are you supposed to keep track of the kid on assignment?” Hoyt questioned, flitting through the ever-expanding pile of papers on his desk. “You’re booked for Amusement Mile today. That’s fuckin’ dangerous.”

Awkwardly, Arthur cleared his throat, feeling unable to meet Hoyt’s disbelieving eyes. His fingers rubbed Carrie’s arm up and down. She burrowed further into the crook of his neck, keeping her hand dutifully over her ear as promised. Her face was hidden from view by a crop of blonde hair -- the little veil he had left that kept work and home as two separate realities.

“I - I, um ...” A giggle got caught in his throat, as thick as a billiard ball. He forced it down. “I was wondering if I could keep her here. Just ... just for --”

_“What?”_

“Just for today, a -- and tomorrow, I’ll be sure --”

“Are you stupid?” Hoyt cuts in, and Arthur’s hand moves from his daughter’s arm to the small hand over her ear like a reflex. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“W -- well, Randall brought in his kid a few w -- weeks ago ... I thought maybe ...”

“Randall’s kid is _twelve_ already, not three.” Hoyt heard a soft mutter of _“she’ll be five soon,”_ as if it would sway the argument in Arthur’s court at all. “What the hell are you thinking in that fucked-up head? No relatives, no friends?”

_“Nobody,”_ he said, and it surprised Hoyt that he hadn’t seen Arthur ... _quite so sad_ before. He’d been sad, sure, but not _pitiful._ He couldn’t be more pitiful if he was dressed as Carnival doing this begging. “My -- my wife just left, I don’t know where she is. My in-laws are on vacation in Burbank and my mom is in the hospital. The neighbors won’t take her and -- and the preschool is closed ‘cause of a rat infestation. Hoyt, I’m ... I’m _begging_ you.”

Something about the sight was so pitiful, so unfunny in his desperation, that Hoyt narrowly refrained from cutting back with _My mistake for thinking you’d have friends._

“Mmf, Daddy,” the source of the frustration croaked. “My arm hurts. Can I put it down?”

“Yeah, Peanut,” he said quietly. The hand slid out from underneath his warm palm and found its way around his neck once again. A thumb brushed away a few strands of hair from her face, unveiling a curtain for her to view this strange new room.

Hoyt almost let slip a surprised _“holy shit”_ as the kid’s head rose to look around the office, wide-eyed in her wonderment, but he thought better of it. But _holy shit_ , did she look like Arthur, in eyes and face shape at least. Slap on a greasy brown wig and she could’ve been a pint-sized clone.

“A jack in the box,” she said quietly, pointing at the dumb clown statue out of his sight in front of his desk. “Daddy, jack in the box.”

“Yeah, Carrie, I see.”

Hoyt bit his lip, at a loss. It was always harder to turn a kid away when he had a name and a face to set to them. Until then the kid could’ve been a delusion for all he knew, the way Arthur talked about her like there was no god damn tomorrow. Who on this green earth would ever think to --?

Ugh. _Fuck._

“You owe me, Arthur. Big time.”

____________________

Nine in the morning rolled around to a relative calm. The kid was, to his relief, quiet and weedy for the most part, like her quiet, weedy father. A long stretch of silence ensued -- half-hour? Two hours? He didn’t fucking know -- where the rhythmic punching of the time cards from the locker room and pen (or crayon) on paper substituted for awkward and mindless conversation he didn’t want to indulge in.

His only indication that she was there at all was the knowledge that his door hadn’t opened since Arthur hurried out to get ready and dropped her in Hoyt’s proverbial lap (had it been a literal instance, he might’ve tossed the kid through the window on reflex), and the occasional kicking of leather sandals and bell bottom pant legs barely visible from his vantage point.

“Hey, don’t get any crayon on my floor,” he warned, wondering internally if she made up for in mischief what she lacked in outward annoyance.

“I won’t,” she replied, too high and cheery for nine in the morning. “I draw pictures to stop Daddy being sad.”

Well isn’t that just fucking lovely. But he had a schedule to amend.

He could send Arthur to the kids’ hospital in Randall’s place -- the kids seemed to really respond to Arthur better ... god, why did Randall have to be such an obnoxious prick of a clown with the kids? It was getting harder and harder to place him--

The rustling of paper and a soft grunt made him look up. Hiding her face from his view, the kid was holding up a drawing of ... colored dots? Big whoop.

She pointed to a bright green one, taking up the center of the page.

“That’s -- that’s my daddy at work,” she explained. He raised a brow. Quite a likeness. “And that’s me, with an ice cream.”

Her little pointer finger trailed to the scribble next to the green -- a flurry of yellow and brown and pink. Was _that_ what she’d spent the last hour on?

“What’s that then?” he asked before he could stop himself, not realizing any words had left his mouth at all until the cap of a chewed blue Bic pen tapped against a blue scribble, neatly tucked away in a folded corner.

“That’s my mommy,” she explained, as casual as though he’d asked for the time. Oh. “She’s taking a break.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to say something he might regret in the hours to come. Before coming to the realization that it was not his business nor his time to care, a question flitted through his mind if Arthur had told the kid about her mom at all.

“I got work to do,” he settled. “Read a book or something.”

____________________

Hoyt never thought he’d ever be disappointed to have a knock on the door that wasn’t Arthur.

“C’min,” he said distractedly.

“Hoyt,” Gary said. “Barney needs the key to the storage closet. Forgot his shoes at home.”

“Second time this week,” Hoyt tutted. Standing up, he allowed himself a stretch that popped his back in several satisfying places, and reached for the key under the strip of tape marked **STORAGE.** “Tell him this had better be the last damn time.”

“I’ll try.”

Their eyes, as though having just materialized in the room, landed on the girl, still lying on the floor but looking up at Gary, saying nothing. Gary’s face softened.

“Oh, _hello,”_ he said amiably. “Is this your daughter, Hoyt?”

_Don’t ever say something like that again --_

“Nah.” He shook his head and sat back down. “Arthur’s kid.”

A moment of recognition passed where Gary’s eyes lit up like a damn Christmas tree. His smile grew wider.

“So this is the Carrie we’ve heard all about,” he exclaimed, sticking his hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Fleck.”

At the lack of response, Hoyt looked over the desk. A blonde crop of hair was unmoved, and even quieter than she’d been before.

“Didn’t your _daddy_ teach you not to stare?” Hoyt probed.

“She’s alright, Hoyt,” Gary countered, keeping his eyes on the girl. “She’s still very young.”

No time like now to teach ‘em not to stare

“Thanks, Hoyt,” Gary continued. At the door frame again, he smiled once more at the kid. “It was very nice to meet you, Carrie.”

The door closed. As if cued by the click of the lock, she turned quickly to Hoyt.

“He was _small!”_ she whispered.

“Yeah, and you’re rude.”

“How rude?”

“It’s fuckin’ _rude_ to stare at him ‘cause he’s short,” Hoyt snapped, pulling yet another litany of papers in a barely-together manila folder from an overstuffed desk drawer. “He doesn’t stare at you ‘cause you’re a girl.”

“But that was scary.”

“There’s a lot scarier guys to be on the lookout for, kid.”

“Who?”

_**Your daddy,** _ _for one._

“I don’t wanna be rude,” she said quietly, beginning to stand. She swiped a bit of dust from the knee of her bell bottoms, putting a nagging word in the back of his mind to sweep the office soon. “I wanna be like my daddy. He’s nice.”

He looked at her briefly before returning to his papers again. Crudely and off-tune, he made out that she was attempting to whistle the Andy Griffith theme.

_Andy Griffith. Sheriff Barney Fife. God damn you, Gary._

The back of a blonde head was cast in varying shades as she stood in front of the window slats, drawing a little pointer finger over the sharpie-marked letters. **_MIME. WHITE FACE PAINT_**

_I have no doubt you’ll be exactly like your daddy. Good luck with that._

______________________

Two o’clock gave Hoyt his first opportunity to get a real look at the Fleck girl. That still felt weird to say.

“Here,” he said stiffly, digging into his back pocket to produce two dimes. “Go down the hall ‘til you reach the Pepsi machine and get us two sodas. It’s lunch time.”

She swiped the dimes from his hand. The contact of nails against his palm made him shiver more than he expected. She felt startlingly real.

A few hesitant steps later -- and he really had to question how poor Arthur was that she looked at the dimes like she’d never seen them before -- she turned to look at him. The pink clip holding her bangs back suddenly bobbed on her head.

“Daddy not let me have soda,” she said.

“Your daddy’s out working. Skedaddle.”

“But what if he come and sees?”

She was lucky her little girl charm made up for the annoying inconsistency of her grammar. If there was one thing Hoyt hated, it was inconsistency.

“We got two hours ‘til you gotta worry about that.”

He looked down again, swiping a red mark through Randall’s name. Another complaint from a kid’s parent from the latest birthday party. _God damn --_

A clanking made him look up, and sigh. She couldn’t reach the door handle.

“Every paper I can’t sign ‘cause of lookin’ after you is coming out of your daddy’s paycheck,” he threatened, standing to open the door.

The kid was made all the more startlingly real, assaulting his senses as he had to grab her arms and push her forward to get her to stop gawking at the animal statues and props in the storage closet that swallowed the hallway. At least the locker room was empty.

_What the fuck are you thinking bringing her here, Fleck?_

Leaning against the opposite wall, he watched with waning curiosity as she rushed over to the machine, concluded she was too short to reach the buttons, and pulled over a yellow chair (the uneven wobbly one that grated on his nerves to hear scraping against the ground in uneven increments) to stand on. Licks of curls rested on her shoulders, reminding Hoyt of her mop-headed father.

Rushing back to him, she triumphantly handed him a blue Pepsi can, keeping the Mountain Dew for herself. Eh, he’s had worse.

“Stay,” he said gruffly, unsure of what else to say. He was more accustomed to dogs than kids, but felt satisfied by her listening skills when she climbed into the yellow chair next to the black trunk-table.

Two minutes later and he found himself in the _impossibly_ weird scenario of not only having lunch outside of the comfort of his office, but tossing a banana to a kid who, by all the laws of nature, should not really be allowed to exist. Cute as she may be, to see physical proof of Arthur Fleck’s sex life made it hard to look at her for more than a few seconds.

Hoyt looked anyway, a little annoyed at her inability to open the soda can with her frail little finger. _Weak like her damn dad_. He swiped it, opened it with a secretly satisfying hiss, and watched her take a great sip. Scrunching her nose -- thank _god_ for her, it wasn’t like Arthur’s -- she stuck her tongue out in derision before reaching over to set it on the table.

Hoyt switched the cans. He hated Pepsi anyway.

He also hated bananas, and the leftover couscous his wife made the previous evening. Mentally he made a note to pack his _own_ damn lunches from then on.

So the banana went to the kid, less out of concern for her eating and more as a means to stop any bellyaching from either her or his wife later.

“So your dad doesn’t let you have soda,” he found himself asking. Why his brain was unable to catch up with his mouth, he wasn’t really sure.

Through a mouthful, she shook her head at him. Swallowing down a sizeable bite, she said, “The sugar bad for my heart.”

“Hmm.”

“My mommy let me have soda, though,” she said, perkier now in a way that made him feel a little rigid. “She likes Coke.”

Hoyt held back a snort of derision and surprise. There were funnier things to mock Arthur about than his wife hitting it big and leaving. Coke was for the rich, he knew. Poor people ... drank Pepsi, he supposed, looking at the kid and the soda can again.

She seemed much more content with the Pepsi can. Metaphorical? Maybe. He was never one to think of analogies -- nor did he really care.

At the sound of the entrance banging open, her eyes widened and she went red. Her hands stayed firmly around the soda can as her proverbial cookie jar.

Whatever jaunty tune Randall was whistling as though he _wasn’t_ twenty minutes late was cut short upon making eye contact with the kid. Hoyt saw something that looked friendly, but not in the same fashion that maybe Gary had in mind.

“Didn’t realize you paid for ‘em so young, Hoyt.”

An inexplicable burning sensation flared in the tips of Hoyt’s ears.

“It’s Arthur’s kid, now fuck off,” he said quickly. “And you’re late.”

“Car broke down again.”

“Well get it fixed, or don’t let it break down on my time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Randall sighed, breezing past them with his nicotine-smelling clown suit in hand, chief of the parents’ complaints.

The girl’s eyes trailed after the huge man, staying on the hallway long after he’d left. She leaned in just after he took in a mouthful of cold, crunchy couscous.

“What did he mean?” she asked quietly.

“Don’t ask questions.”

____________________

Hoyt’s leg bounced, eyeing the clock out of his peripheral. If Arthur believed Hoyt was letting himself be saddled with the kid for one minute past four o’clock, he was really out of it.

The kid was getting restless, and relentlessly annoying. She surprised him with her expert knowledge on blowing up and tying balloons -- _**of course**_ _Arthur would teach her that, what a valuable life skill_ \-- but the inefficient scraping of two ends of a tightly-woven balloon into a barely-decipherable balloon animal made him wanna pop the thing right in her face. God _damn,_ why did he keep a pile of them within her reach?

She made a snake, she declared. Or a worm.

Upon reaching for another one, it came with an unnecessary avalanche of wormy friends as the corner of a plastic bag scattered a cluster of colored balloons on the carpeted floor.

_“Shit,”_ he grumbled, rounding the desk to collect them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her put back the one she’d originally grabbed. “You’d better hope your dad has money to pay for new balloons, kid.”

“Shhh ...” His eyes narrowed at her, watching her lean down with him to collect handfuls -- albeit smaller handfuls -- of long balloons. _“Shit._ Shit, shit, shit.”

____________________

Two minutes to four, Arthur came into the office, looking like a man on a mission. It was to his visible relief, Hoyt noticed, that the kid was happy and very much alive.

_“Daddy!”_ she exclaimed, hopping from the chair to take aim around his pant leg, leaving her picture book on the ground. A hand stroked a stray curl behind her ear and she smiled up at him, smitten. “I drew you pictures and -- and I made you a balloon snake, but it popped.”

Groaning, he pried her arms away and bent down to her level.

“Were you good for Hoyt?” he asked, the faintest smile threatening to split on his face. Eight hours of work would not stop him from enjoying how soft her hair was, or how she smelled like cherries when she hugged his hulking, sweaty form.

“Just aces,” Hoyt smiled cloyingly and sardonically, twisting a pen cap between his fingers. “Get a sitter for her tomorrow or don’t bother coming in.”

“That good, huh?” Arthur questioned, groaning again in achy protest as he stood up. “I’ll find a sitter for her, I promise. Thank you. _Thank you,_ Hoyt.”

____________________

Three hours and two much-needed baths later, Arthur was finding a familiar rhythm in twirling his best girl around their little living room, not minding that he got lost in the mask he wore in front of her. Their old turntable in the corner warbled and scratched, but he scarcely noticed.

Carrie didn’t smile at anybody the way she smiled at him. He hoped she knew the flip side to that was true as well.

_**Que sera sera** _

_**Whatever will be, will be** _

_**The future’s not ours to see** _

_**Que sera sera** _

“I talked with Mom on the phone today,” he mentioned, watching her face brighten into a widening grin. “She said she wants to meet up with us to take you to lunch on Saturday.”

“Is she come back?” she asked. With her left hand enveloped in her father’s, she shifted her right arm so it rested against his chest and she could lean back to look at him. His face fell slightly.

“No, Peanut, I don’t think so. _But_ you’ve been doing so well with school ‘til it closed, I thought you could tell her _all_ the new rhyming words you learned. You learned what rhymes with bit, didn’t you?”

Her eyes traveled up to the ceiling, scrunching her nose to remember.

“Split,” she concluded, aglow in his proud smile. “Now you.”

“Befit. You?”

“Uh ... grit.”

At a very inelegant dip, which sent her into shrieking giggles as she felt her ponytail brush the floor, he said, “Banana split.”

“That doesn’t count!” she laughed.

“Oh, really? How does it not count?” he humored.

“Cause I said split! No cheating!”

“Then tool kit,” he smiled. “But now you have to think of two words.”

“Quit, and ...” She stopped to consider. “Oh, I learned one today! _Shit.”_

______________________

“Hoyt?”

“What do you want?”

Arthur looked from the paper in his hands, to the area of space between his person and the paper, filled in by the sight of his feet doing an awkward little soft shoe. Should he even question Hoyt about this? He was as honest as he could be, but something about this didn’t seem to add up.

“It’s just, uh ... my paycheck seems higher than it should be?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Well, no, but --”

“Then what is it?”

A nervous sweat started to form at Arthur’s hairline.

“It’s just that ... I did the math, and -- and it looks like you paid me for one of the days I didn’t work.”

“Are you tellin’ me you don’t think I did my math right? Go get a fuckin’ bank job if you think you know better.”

“So ... I’m -- I’m fine if I deposit the two hundred from the check?”

“Your money,” Hoyt grumbled, signing away another mindless paper. For being a clown business, he sure did have a shitload of stodgy paperwork. “Pay your rent, buy a hooker, some booze ... a snazzy divorce lawyer.”

Turning, Arthur felt something air-light in his chest, still disbelieving of the good fortune.

_I can pay the rent,_ he registered. _I can pay the rent and I can buy Carrie some new toys._

“Hey, how’s the little ankle-biter, by the way?”

He turned again, slower.

“What?”

“Kelly, the -- the kid you brought in on Monday. Raised hell in my office.”

“Oh ... Carrie?”

Arthur looked down at his shoes again, smiling. Staying with his mom and her newly-broken arm, bellyaching about wanting Hoyt as her babysitter again because _“Nana can only make TV dinners.”_

“She’s just aces.”

**Author's Note:**

> This could be regarded as a one-off prequel to the main story I'm writing about little Carrie Frances Fleck. I'm posting this from my tumblr (@sabrinaeileensnape) in lieu of a big batch of writer's block for a certain chapter.
> 
> I am obsessed with the set design for Ha-Ha's and how it seems like an absurdist's paradise. I have no doubt any kid of Arthur Fleck's would become immediately infatuated with it.
> 
> I'm also a sucker for a hardass being put in charge of small children. Hoyt reminds me of Sam from the TV show GLOW (Sam's actor Marc Maron was Gene, Murray's assistant in Joker)


End file.
